Western Bulldogs coach Rodney Eade has refused to be drawn on veteran midfielder Scott West’s AFL future, saying no decision will be made until the end of the season.

West, who turns 34 in November, was ruled out for the rest of the season at the weekend following the flare-up of a long-standing knee problem which has kept him to just four games this year.

No decision has been made on whether the seven-time Bulldogs best and fairest, who is out of contract at the end of the year, will continue on in 2009.

But Eade said the decision whether West would play on would be a joint one and wouldn’t be made until the Bulldogs had finished their finals campaign.

“We’ll sit down at the end of the season at the appropriate time and talk about our list,” Eade said.

“I haven’t thought about it. To be honest, we’re just worrying about now.”

But West will be involved in the Bulldogs’ march into September, working alongside Eade’s assistant Leon Cameron coaching the team’s midfield.

The Bulldogs have also lost defender Tom Williams for the season after another injury setback.

The luckless Williams broke down again with a quadriceps injury.

The Dogs have decided to shelve Williams for the year and sent him for shoulder surgery he was scheduled for at season’s end.

Williams was being spoken of as a possible match-up for Hawthorn’s Lance Franklin in the qualifying final in a fortnight.

Meanwhile, Eade has brushed aside outspoken star Jason Akermanis’ criticism of AFL drug-testing procedures.

Akermanis said he believed he and teammates Brad Johnson, Robert Murphy and Daniel Cross were being consistently targeted by the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA), which conducts random tests on players.

In his regular column in News Limited newspapers, Akermanis said the four had provided the past 11 tests done on Western Bulldogs players and called for every player on club lists to be tested at least once a year rather than the current system.

But Eade said he had not read Akermanis’ column - which featured on the back page of today’s Herald-Sun newspaper in Victoria - and dismissed talk the comments would distract from his side’s upcoming finals campaign.

“I don’t know much about it - I’m not involved in it,” Eade said of drug-testing.

“I don’t get tested so I don’t know how many times players do or don’t get tested.”

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